The owner brags to every one she can that every person on the payroll makes the same amount. Period. So, she claims that she makes the same as me. So to find out that anyone, but especially the only man on staff is making literally 10 times what I make is infuriating. It is further problematic because I should be making what he makes and he should be making a quarter of what he does (based on my internet research).

The owner brags to every one she can that every person on the payroll makes the same amount. Period. So, she claims that she makes the same as me. So to find out that anyone, but especially the only man on staff is making literally 10 times what I make is infuriating. It is further problematic because I should be making what he makes and he should be making a quarter of what he does (based on my internet research).

Wow, what the fizzle? How does that work? Either he is making bank, or you are making peanuts. I'm guessing it's the latter? This is mind boggling to me.

_________________"One time I meant to send a potential employer a resume, but I accidentally sent them a bucket of puke!

Wait, why is your boss saying everyone makes the sane amount when it's not true? What are the numbers she's using? And that is a pretty startling disparity.

It is. She takes a strange pride in saying our company is not like other corps... because it is all women. Save one person. And I think she justifies it by saying he doesn't work much. However... I ran the numbers last night. Based on man hours, at an equal rate for all I would nearly double what I am making now.

She has been known to lie, and to say what ever she needs to to look like the typical "money is dirty" hippy. She thinks it makes her look good to the people she wants to look good to. All the while I can't make ends meet if anything happens.

Oh, man, kfad. I hope you find a new job. I really hate working with/for dishonest people. Also hate it when people deliberately fudge things to make it seem like their feminist, anti-oppression, whatever when they're actually self-serving slime balls.

My boyfriend's dad is a misogynist. He believes that men do a better job of raising children than women, that a male figure in a children's life is more important than a female. He doesn't agree with abortion and laughs about female genital mutilation. He believes that the reported number of rapes is vastly overrated despite the opposite being true. He blames equality and feminism for destroying society and says that women should stay at home and the man should rule the roost. He says that if he had the chance, he would eradicate women from the planet. All this and he prides himself on being a left-wing liberal. I can't tell you how frustrating it is being around him, sometimes he makes me so mad that I've started shaking with rage. What makes it worse is that I'm still relatively new here, with few friends and the vast majority of people in our social group are male. I sick of arguing with him. I've told my boyfriend about how I feel and he just says that his dad is argumentative and to just ignore him, but how can I? I'm a woman, when he insults my gender, he's insulting me too.

My boyfriend's dad is a misogynist. He believes that men do a better job of raising children than women, that a male figure in a children's life is more important than a female. He doesn't agree with abortion and laughs about female genital mutilation. He believes that the reported number of rapes is vastly overrated despite the opposite being true. He blames equality and feminism for destroying society and says that women should stay at home and the man should rule the roost. He says that if he had the chance, he would eradicate women from the planet. All this and he prides himself on being a left-wing liberal. I can't tell you how frustrating it is being around him, sometimes he makes me so mad that I've started shaking with rage. What makes it worse is that I'm still relatively new here, with few friends and the vast majority of people in our social group are male. I sick of arguing with him. I've told my boyfriend about how I feel and he just says that his dad is argumentative and to just ignore him, but how can I? I'm a woman, when he insults my gender, he's insulting me too.

WOW. Just ... wow!

Jigglypuff wrote:

Mississippi may effectively ban abortion in a few days. I am so sad and worried.

Abortion is illegal where I live and it does worry me. I can always travel to the mainland and if I ever needed to get an aboprtion but at the extra expense of a flight or boat and coach etc, which I may not be able to afford. It makes me really angry.

Lately, I find myself unable to practice what I preach about positive body image. A friend of mine is really struggling with it, and recently told me that our conversations about weight loss, feminism, and body acceptance have helped her gain some perspective and stop engaging in the disordered eating patterns that were emerging in her diet. I'm happy about that, but I still can't seem to get over my own self-loathing and fat-phobia. I feel like a hypocrite and a poor example of a feminist.

Lately, I find myself unable to practice what I preach about positive body image. A friend of mine is really struggling with it, and recently told me that our conversations about weight loss, feminism, and body acceptance have helped her gain some perspective and stop engaging in the disordered eating patterns that were emerging in her diet. I'm happy about that, but I still can't seem to get over my own self-loathing and fat-phobia. I feel like a hypocrite and a poor example of a feminist.

I feel exactly the same as you do. I feel like I should be happy with my body no matter what but I am not and it makes me hate myself even more, which isn't very helpful.

Lately, I find myself unable to practice what I preach about positive body image. A friend of mine is really struggling with it, and recently told me that our conversations about weight loss, feminism, and body acceptance have helped her gain some perspective and stop engaging in the disordered eating patterns that were emerging in her diet. I'm happy about that, but I still can't seem to get over my own self-loathing and fat-phobia. I feel like a hypocrite and a poor example of a feminist.

You are no alone there. I too feel like the world's biggest hypocrite. I keep trying to correct my thoughts every time I have them and it helps a wee little bit. I'm getting better about it internally inch by agonizing inch.

_________________"Vegan to me means Oreos for breakfast." -Poopiebitch"tl;dr: I quit working to drink beer paid for with gift cards" erikasoyf*cker

Lately, I find myself unable to practice what I preach about positive body image. A friend of mine is really struggling with it, and recently told me that our conversations about weight loss, feminism, and body acceptance have helped her gain some perspective and stop engaging in the disordered eating patterns that were emerging in her diet. I'm happy about that, but I still can't seem to get over my own self-loathing and fat-phobia. I feel like a hypocrite and a poor example of a feminist.

I have a lot of thoughts about that! This is a very condensed version of them.

When you look at a woman with body image issues, do you think that she must not be feminist enough? Or do you think she is struggling with something because we live in a culture where we are taught so much to hate our bodies that we can't necessarily undo it with some critical thinking? I bet if you're a feminist your thoughts are more aligned with the latter. I should hope that when you look at a woman with body image issues you would feel some compassion and not judge her for feeling that way, right?

So maybe extend that compassion to yourself?

If feminism made you immune from feeling bad about your body that would be awesome, but I don't think that's how it works.

_________________"No one with hair so soft and glossy could ever be bad at anything." - Tofulish

I think that is the perfect way to put it. It is so easy to be compassionate towards others but so difficult to turn towards yourself. It's something that I am working on but it is difficult.

I've started to use a hooksian definition of love--that is, that's it's an action not a word--when I think about body love. Loving my body means feeding it well, letting it rest, moving it enough to feel good, and accepting where it's at today. That doesn't mean I always think it's the best thing ever or that there aren't things I want to change about it. But it does mean treating it with respect and kindness, the same way I would treat anything/body else that I love.

_________________"I'd rather have dried catshit! I'd rather have astroturf! I'd rather have an igloo!"~Isa

"But really, anyone willing to dangle their baby in front of a crocodile is A-OK in my book."~SSD

I am really appreciating these last few comments. I can totally relate to feeling bad about my body sometimes/feeling bad about feeling bad about it/thinking for some reason that I should be able to overcome decades of negative views about women's bodies being pumped into my brain. Even though I feel like I generally have a fairly positive body image and objectively that I have a pretty mainstream-approved body shape and I know that I am pretty healthy and fit. All these things make me feel even more guilty during the times that I don't feel good about my body and feel even more angry about our forked up cultural notions of beauty. strawberryrock and J-Dub, I like your ways of framing it.

Personally, I think it's not just okay, but normal to have complicated and conflicting feelings about our bodies, and I think it sucks that some people/schools of thought make women feel guilty for not being totally 100% happy about their bodies at all times. I think that part of body acceptance is accepting that not only do we not need perfect bodies, but we don't need to have perfect feelings about our bodies either. There's a lot of complicated stuff that contributes to how we feel about our bodies, no matter how they look/function/feel. The compassionate approach allows us to take that into account and accept not just our bodies, but our relationships with our bodies, rather than just adding another potential layer of policing and shaming.

_________________If you spit on my food I will blow your forking head off, you filthy shitdog. - MumblesDon't you know that vegan meat is the gateway drug to chicken addiction? Because GMO and trans-fats. - kaerlighed

On a practical level, I found that my relationship with my body changed when I started treating it like I loved it, a lot like what j-dub was saying, and my relationship with my feelings about my body changed when I realized that I would NEVER say the mean things to/about a friend that I said to myself, so why would I not treat myself as well as I'd treat a friend. Not that the thoughts didn't come up anymore, but I would remind myself of that whenever body issues popped up.

I was finally able to find peace with, and even love my body in my early to mid thirties, but now as I settle firmly into my forties, my relationship with my body is changing again. I could accept my not-perfect-by-society's-standards face/body while it was youthful, but I'm having to readjust my ideas of acceptance as the things I learned to love about myself change with age and things shift and sag and wrinkle. It's a new challenge, but I'm hoping I can grow into accepting it like I was able to before.

_________________Ain't no guarantees in life, and nothing that comes out of my vagina can change that. - Erika Soyf*cker

My friend. We went wakeboarding/swimming/boating yesterday, and while we were waiting at the lake for my dad, she kept wanting to talk about how uncomfortable she felt in her bikini, and how poor her body image is. She consistently brings up weight loss and other things.I have a rule. I do not talk about weight. It's boring, it's awkward, it's uninteresting. If you're uncomfortable in a bikini, find a different kind of swim suit. I wear one because it's comfortable and easy to wakeboard in. It has nothing to do with how "cute" I look. A swim suit is a means to an end to me- getting in the water.

I don't even know what more I can do to tell her I do not want to talk about her damn weight. I don't care. It's dull.

My friend. We went wakeboarding/swimming/boating yesterday, and while we were waiting at the lake for my dad, she kept wanting to talk about how uncomfortable she felt in her bikini, and how poor her body image is. She consistently brings up weight loss and other things.I have a rule. I do not talk about weight. It's boring, it's awkward, it's uninteresting. If you're uncomfortable in a bikini, find a different kind of swim suit. I wear one because it's comfortable and easy to wakeboard in. It has nothing to do with how "cute" I look. A swim suit is a means to an end to me- getting in the water.

I don't even know what more I can do to tell her I do not want to talk about her damn weight. I don't care. It's dull.

I have a friend who keeps trying to talk to me about food and nutrition and fat and stuff like that, and constantly makes little comments about weight loss. I couldn't be less interested. Now every time she brings up anything related to any of that, I just keep my mouth completely shut, and say nothing. It's hard, though. It's getting to the point I just don't want to be around her, but I'm hoping she'll eventually get the message and find something else to talk about.

_________________"If I were M. de la Viandeviande, I would now write a thirteen page post about how you have to have free will to be vegan, but modern science does not suggest any evidence for free will, therefore it is impossible to be vegan." -mumbles

I just walked out of the office of a coworker, because she changed the topic from work to the fact that none of her clothes fit, and she's gained three pounds, and it's probably because she doesn't exercise, but she doesn't like working out, and blahity blahity blah... I think it really shocked/insulted her. She complains like this all the time, and I'm hoping that just walking out without a word might key her in that I'm not going to participate.